Cyber Resilience

Cyber resilience has become increasingly critical due to the escalating volume and sophistication of cyberattacks, coupled with our growing dependence on digital ecosystems. Organizations today are not only tasked with preventing breaches, but also ensuring continuity and recovery when incidents occur. Consider these key points:

• Rising Cyber Threats: According to a 2023 report by Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime will cost $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, emphasizing the sheer scale of risk businesses face globally. For instance, recent ransomware attacks on critical industries like healthcare and energy have showcased the devastating consequences of unpreparedness. 

• Remote Work Challenges: With the surge in hybrid and remote work environments, attack surfaces have expanded significantly. A study by IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found that breaches linked to remote work cost an average of $1 million more than the global average. 

• Regulatory Pressures: Governments worldwide are introducing stricter compliance measures, like the EU’s GDPR or California’s CPRA, which require businesses to prioritize data protection and incident response strategies. 

By acknowledging these realities and leveraging forward-thinking approaches, businesses can stay ahead of attacks, minimizing operational disruptions and reputational damage.

Maintaining Business Continuity 

Cyber threats have grown more sophisticated, with ransomware attacks occurring every 11 seconds. For organizations, even a minor disruption can lead to operational standstills. A cyber resilience framework ensures critical systems remain operational and minimizes downtime, enabling organizations to continue serving customers during crises. 

Protecting Customer Trust and Data 

A single breach can lead to compromised customer data—which damages trust, but could also lead to steep fines from regulations like GDPR (up to €20 million) or CCPA. Cyber resilience ensures systems and processes are in place to safeguard sensitive information against both intentional attacks and accidental leaks. 

Adhering to Compliance Regulations 

Global jurisdictions have enacted stringent cybersecurity and privacy standards, such as ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and more. These regulations require businesses to establish robust data management practices. A cyber resilience strategy maps compliance across workflows, ensuring uninterrupted legal alignment. 

Reducing Financial Impact 

Cyber resilience is essential for safeguarding your business against costly disruptions. By enabling rapid recovery, it not only minimizes downtime, but also protects your reputation and maintains customer trust in the face of unexpected breaches.

Staying Competitive 

Clients and stakeholders increasingly seek partnerships with organizations that emphasize data protection. Implementing cyber resilience not only reduces risks, but also positions your business as a trusted partner in today’s digital ecosystem.

While cyber security focuses on defensive measures like intrusion prevention and firewall protection, cyber resilience takes a broader view:

• Cyber security: Prevents unauthorized access, data breaches, and malware infections. For instance, if that phishing attack succeeds, cyber resilience strategies ensure the company has data backups and a recovery plan to restore systems quickly and minimize downtime.

• Cyber Resilience: Mitigates the aftermath of an attack, ensuring rapid recovery and minimal disruption to operations. For instance, if that phishing attack succeeds, cyber resilience ensures the company has data backups and a recovery plan to restore systems quickly and minimize downtime. 

Think of cyber security as the front-line defense and cyber resilience as the safety net. A layered approach combining both strategies provides maximum security and operational stability.

1. Prevention 

• Proactively identify and stop potential threats before they materialize. 

• Implement intrusion detection systems to spot anomalous behavior. 

• Regularly patch and update software to close vulnerabilities. 

• Evaluate recent industry-specific breaches to uncover potential blind spots in your defenses.

2. Protection 

• Contain threats to prevent further damage. 

• Use endpoint protection tools to isolate infected devices. 

• Quarantine compromised data sources to stop malware spread. 

• Utilize Zero Trust models to authenticate access across your network.

3. Response 

• Act decisively when a threat materializes. 

• Create incident response playbooks outlining department-specific actions to be taken. 

• Use automatic incident response systems to minimize human delay during crises. 

• Have C-level executives prepared to handle communication with internal stakeholders and the public.

4. Recovery 

• Ensure a quick return to normalcy post-incident. 

• Use orchestration tools to automate system restoration. 

• Implement backup systems with immutable air-gaps to recover clean data. 

• Continuously analyze incidents to prevent recurrence by filling gaps in your resilience strategy.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. You might already have several systems in place that will help you counter cyber threats. However, a cyber resilience plan should consider recovery and prevention. 

To ensure complete protection, the business leaders and C-level executives of your organization should identify the most critical functions of the business. All such functions must be protected to keep the business operational during an attack. It’s also important to have a plan of action that details roles and responsibilities in the face of an attack. All of these will help you build a holistic defense system that’s ready for internal and external threats. 

Here’s a list of questions segregated by different stages of a cyber attack. Try answering these to quickly assess your organization’s present readiness towards a cyber threat.

Prevent

• Do you have the right mechanisms to detect a cyber threat before it executes? 

• Are your data protection and security software solutions updated regularly to prevent threat actors from gaining access through unpatched or vulnerable systems?

• Are you aware of the gaps that caused a cyber attack on other companies in your industry? Have you sealed those gaps?

Protect

• In the event of a cybersecurity incident, can you stop the spread of the attack without affecting critical business operations?

• Can you identify the infected data sources (devices and servers) and quarantine or isolate them so that the infection does not go beyond the already affected hardware?

Respond

• Are the C-level executives of your organization aware of how to respond to internal (board members) and external (shareholders) stakeholders during and after a cyber threat?

• Does your organization have an incident response plan that details the responsibilities of different teams when there is an attack? 

• Can you respond automatically (without IT intervention) to an attack using automated incident playbooks?

Recover

• Do you have the right orchestration and automation tools and services to get back on track after an event? 

• Do you have a mechanism to recover lost data?

• What’s the plan of action to fill the cracks that caused the attack?

Learn more about multi-layered cyber resilience for the enterprise.

Representative stakeholders of each organization must come together to decide what needs to be done to become cyber resilient. The best practices listed here are broad and can serve as guidelines for the cyber incident response plan of your organization. 

Explore the best practices below, and learn more about cyber resilience in the Ransomware Survival Guide, an eBook highlighting in-depth strategies to safeguard enterprise data.

Understand the risks and always be prepared

If you wait to secure your cyber space until an attack happens, you are putting your organization’s data at risk. Prepare an incident response plan to counter the attack and mitigate the wide variety of risks that can arise. It’s not a matter of whether, but when your organization will face a cyber threat.

Report the cyber attack to the authorities

During a data breach, if any customer data is exposed, you must report it to the right authorities. Failing to do so can attract heavy fines from several data governance and compliance agencies. In several countries, it’s not mandatory to report a cyber attack if no customer data has been leaked. However, reporting an attack can help law enforcement agencies gather more information about the breach and prevent other organizations from becoming a victim of the same threat. 

Invest in cyber resilient solutions

There are several types of data protection, backup, and recovery solutions that you can use to keep your data safe and recover lost data after an attack. According to a recent survey, attackers are continuously looking for new ways to evade detection¹. The report urges organizations to adopt new defensive tools to counter the ever-growing ways attackers can exploit an organization and its data.

Regularly upgrade to the latest version of software and install patches

Cyber criminals are working day and night to find even a tiny vulnerability in software they can exploit to breach your cyber defenses. Companies often do not update their software or patch it as soon as updates are available. Attackers exploit the vulnerabilities in outdated and unpatched software to deploy ransomware and malware. However, using a cloud solution such as Druva eliminates the need to manually upgrade your software.

Modernize your IT solutions and move to the cloud

Data stored on-premises is not only vulnerable to software attacks, but also physical threats, such as natural disasters or someone willfully destroying the hardware. Moreover, public clouds such as AWS and Azure (both options where Druva can store data) guarantee 99.99% uptime and have internationally recognized third-party audits and security certifications such as Cyber Essentials. Your data is much more secure in the cloud than on-premises.

Educate employees about cyber attack vectors and how to avoid them

Several cyber attacks start with employees becoming victims of phishing. In fact, a recent survey by the Government of the UK revealed that 83% of breaches start as phishing attacks². Training employees about the different kinds of cyber attacks and how to identify them is a small cost, rather than spending a hefty sum to recover from an attack.

Regularly test the system and conduct tabletop exercises

A system is only good when it works. You must periodically perform test runs and TableTop eXercises (TTX) of the cyber resilient system that you have put in place. This ensures everything is working as expected, and there are no loopholes or dead ends. Use a third-party cyber security specialist to conduct a fire drill and TTX, so that you can effectively determine where the gaps lie.

With the rise of sophisticated cyber threats like ransomware and data breaches, organizations are under increasing pressure to protect their critical data. However, some companies remain reluctant to invest in cyber resilience strategies, often overlooking that recovering from an attack costs far more than building a secure, resilient infrastructure. 

Data is the heart of smarter decisions, exceptional customer experiences, and accelerated business growth. Discover how Druva customers achieve remarkable results with cloud-native data resilience in our latest eBook. Learn how modern, cloud-native solutions not only safeguard your data but also deliver measurable ROI, reduce costs, and enhance business agility. Download the eBook now and unlock the full potential of your data!

Organizations that invest in cyber resilience not only protect their critical infrastructure but also unlock opportunities for stronger customer trust, reduced downtime, and expansive growth. Transformation starts with awareness and intent, but success depends on action.

Druva’s cyber resilience solutions provide comprehensive data protection and proactive compliance monitoring, ensuring your business can recover smarter, faster, and stronger. With Druva, you gain end-to-end visibility across your critical workloads, automated threat detection, and seamless recovery for ransomware and other cyber threats. Built on a 100% SaaS platform, Druva's solutions eliminate the need for additional hardware, reducing complexity and costs.

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What is a cyber resilience plan? 

A cyber resilience plan is a structured strategy designed to identify, mitigate, and recover from cybersecurity threats. It combines proactive and reactive measures to ensure businesses maintain critical functions during incidents. 

How can cyber resilience improve risk management? 

Risk management focuses on identifying vulnerabilities, while cyber resilience turns this data into a mechanism for action. Together, they create actionable frameworks to address risks holistically. 

Why are cloud platforms better for cyber resilience? 

Unlike legacy systems, cloud services provide better flexibility, scalability, and automated recovery tools with robust compliance. Additionally, many offer immutable air-gapped backup systems that ensure data is tamper-proof. 

What are the key components of a cyber resilience framework? 

A strong cyber resilience framework includes threat detection, incident response, data recovery, and ongoing risk assessments. These components work together to minimize downtime and protect critical assets. 

How does employee training impact cyber resilience? 

Employee training is crucial for building cyber resilience. Educating staff on identifying phishing attacks, using secure passwords, and reporting suspicious activity helps prevent breaches and enhances security. 

What role does automation play in cyber resilience? 

Automation streamlines threat detection and response processes, reducing human error and response times. Tools like AI-powered monitoring systems and automated backups are essential for maintaining resilience.